Guys, I have been talking with Wendell Odom about doing a Q&A/interview about him and his new book. Post up any (serious) questions you have for him, the mods and I will pick some and send them over to Wendell. When he replies, I'll post them up in the blog.

Wendell, first off, thanks so very much for sitting down and taking time out of your busy schedule to answer our questions!

How do you feel about Cisco fragmenting their certification paths and seemingly making a certification discipline out of anything they can? Do you feel they're playing a sort of "catch up" to quickly ratify the newest industry buzzwords in a certification?

Thank you!

And actually I appreciate MS certified people quite a bit. Not in the " I wish I did what you did" kinda way, but in a "I'm glad you're doing that so I don't have to" kind way. - Infinite ca. 2010

One of Cisco's biggest strengths has always been that it's very innovative. Is Cisco being short sited in their firing of a large portion of their staff so their books show up with a larger profit margin? Will that effect their innovativeness and what is the likely hood that it could hurt them in the up-coming years.

My understanding is that Juniper and other companies are starting to get some more of the market share, how is this going to effect us, and what are Cisco's plans to smite them.

Networks are by most standards very difficult to configure and maintain, and very very in-tolerant of mistakes (1 mistake and your network and everything connected can die). Do you for-see this ever changing? for example typing "P2P vpn 2.2.2.5" and having that negotiate a P2P VPN with 2.2.2.5. Or name based ACLs that do the majority of the work in the back ground, for example permit COPS to CAMERAS.

How is "the cloud" going to effect IT staffing? For example thin-clients, you'll need more high level people to manage the massive servers... but it will lower the number of entry level positions such as the computer tech who use to image/fix the PC will now just swap out the hardware, and what will be the long term effects of this?

Currently the average community collage might offer an Associate's networking degree with the CCNA at the end. With more and more services moving to the cloud and remote locations do you for-see collages and universities starting to offer more and better rounded networking degrees?

Freedom to all the people. Brave, true and strong. Freedom to all the people. Unless I think you're wrong

Is Cisco being short sited in their firing of a large portion of their staff so their books show up with a larger profit margin?

"books"? Do you mean "equipment" or "systems"? Cisco Press publications are produced by Pearson Press under a licensed partnership arrangement wtih Cisco, I'm not of the link between the number of Cisco employees and Cisco Press margin ... or have I been sucked in?

Aubrey

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Alvin Toffler, "Future Shock" 1970

I believe he's speaking about their finances; "books". Cisco's overhead has taken control of their profit margin and is a very large reason they continue to show very stagnant growth. They're too damn big for their own good.

And actually I appreciate MS certified people quite a bit. Not in the " I wish I did what you did" kinda way, but in a "I'm glad you're doing that so I don't have to" kind way. - Infinite ca. 2010

I'm reading Wendell's ICND1 and ICND2 second edition book (for CCNA preparation). I see sometimes some points that are very far from being "intuitive" to understand. I wanted to post those points. Even, if Wendell could not answer to them ; may be some people in the forum will be interested to discuss about them.